Abraham wrote:I'm puzzled about GPS in phones being so widely heralded.
Before GPS in phones, we had maps and they worked just fine and still do.
Some are pre-printed, others hand drawn, but all work.
Wait, I get it, many couldn't use a map and were constantly lost if they had to go to some place new, but couldn't bring themselves to admit it.
Now, they're so dog gone happy they're not lost all the time they're ecstatic and want the world to know the glory of phone GPS.
Abraham, many is the time that I used a Thomas Guide to find my way around greater Los Angeles, in the days before GPS. The great advantage to most GPS systems today is that they have a digital voice. You don't have to pull over to look at the map to see where your next turn is, or to look down once in a while at a sheet of directions. You just turn where the digital voice tells you to turn, so the system becomes a heads up system, which is safer all the way around.
The thing about smartphones is this...... Could I live without one? Yes, I could. I lived without
any kind of cellphone at all for the first 45 years or so of my life. If an EMP rendered all smartphones and GPS systems inoperable tomorrow, I could easily go back to using maps, pencils, and paper, and figure my way around things. But smartphones aren't that complicated. The technology
behind them is, but actually using them isn't. But a common framing hammer is the same way. It's not a complicated tool; but the process of manufacturing one
is fairly complex. I remember working for what must have been one of the very last businesses on the planet to buy a fax machine. Yes, we did OK for years without one; but on the day we finally bought one, doing business actually got a lot
easier. It made it possible for our business to communicate certain things like quotes, backorders, etc., to our customers
at the same rate that our competitors, who already had fax machines, could reach our customers.
Certainly, life is possible without the benefits of technology, but technology has great power to make our lives easier, our businesses more competitive, to expand our horizons and understanding of the world, etc., etc. Smartphones are just a part of that larger picture.
I am responding in this way, with the utmost respect by the way, because you said that you are puzzled about GPS in phones being so widely heralded. You don't understand the popularity. Well, if you had never sipped an ice-cold beer or Dr. Pepper, you could never understand why others like it so much. If you have never owned/used a modern GPS device or smartphone (or a smartphone with a GPS app), then you could never understand the attraction. If you have never driven a car with disc brakes, you could never understand why people couldn't be content with old-school drum brakes. If you had never had a car with digital fuel injection, you would never understand why people couldn't be satisfied with simple carburetors. If you had never fired anything but a lever action .30-30, you couldn't understand why people like AR15s so much.
I could make many more such comparisons. The point is that, while old-school methods still work,
new-school methods get adopted because they usually are a better way of doing things. My concern isn't that new technologies are so popular. My concern is whether or not people can exist without them if they have to. The recent Grammy Awards show was a perfect example of what happens to people who rely on technologies without an underlying basic skill set. There is a piece of software in the recording industry called "Autotune" which recognizes when a singer's voice is just a tad sharp or flat relative to the instruments, and it digitally bends the electronic voice signal until it is in tune to the instrument signal. Modern recording artists have come to rely on this
so much now that many of them can't sing on key outside of the recording studio. They lack the fundamental skill of being able to sing on key. It was apparent during their Grammy performances. Ditto with electronic guitar tuners. For the first 35 years that I played guitar, I had no electronic tuning device. I used a tuning fork, and my ear........which was pretty good, by the way. Today, after playing for 51 years now, I use electronic tuning pedals to keep my guitar tuned.....because it is quick and accurate, and it gets rid of the tuning fork......but I could easily go back to doing it the old-school way if I had to. Lots of young guitar players have never known a world in which a fairly high-quality accurate electronic tuning device wasn't available. Will they be able to tune their guitars after an EMP? I doubt it........but
I can.
So with regard to modern GPS and GPS apps in smartphones, there is nothing wrong with using them. It
is a better and safer way of navigating. BUT......batteries can die, cellular service isn't always available, phones get dropped and broken, etc., and it would be pretty silly to find one's self in such a situation, not being able to read a simple map and navigate by it. So your way of doing it is a very good foundation. My way of doing it is an improvement on your way of doing it.........so long as I have the skill to do things your way if my way is no longer available to me.
The way I reacted to that phone, one would believe I was an Indian seeing white men for the first time. The cost per minute to use the thing was some crazy high dollar amount. I will never forget telling him how ridiculous I thought the whole idea was. Good night nurse! Why on earth would anyone want to talk on the phone while driving around town?
